Description

A different twist on politics in which the politics aspect of the deck is a side-effect of using cards that benefit oneself

I've had a lot of experience with playing group hug, politics, pillow fort, group slug and chaos archetypes in commander, and I have noticed that the same thing happens every time: Either your deck slows down the game to a grind, the board state becomes a stalemate, you end up giving far too many resources to one person (causing the rest of the players to get upset) or people find you to be a nuisance because you are taking the fun out of their deck by changing the game. Another big problem about these archetypes is that they end up being a fairly sizable trade-off between changing other people's board state and changing your own (i.e. you have no board presence because you were too busy putting vows on everything). This deck is an attempt at finding the optimal balance between politics/group hug/chaos/group slug and having a fun, fair game that you can still be a big player in.

If you were to look at this deck in the most basic form possible, it is obvious that it is a group slug deck; you're dealing damage to players every turn and drawing cards from it. But in practice this deck has much more finesse than most group slug decks.

The idea of the deck is fairly self-explanatory: Ping your opponents every once in a while with Vial Smasher the Fierce to draw cards from Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist, but offer everyone else most of the benefits that you are gaining. People tend to not like Vial Smasher the Fierce all that much, but if you are in a 4-way game, people tend to be willing to roll the dice and take about (on average) 4 damage (or more like 1 damage a round if there was no variance) in order to reap the benefits of Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist.

The thing that sets this deck apart from most group slug decks is that people are usually willing to take the damage that you are dishing out, and half of the reason for this is the fact that the deck works fairly gradually; If you are set out to do something, it is pretty obvious what you are trying to do. This makes you much less of a threat than, say, an infinite combo deck, because it is safe to leave you on the sideline while bigger threats are taken care of.

Another big thing about this deck is that a lot of the time the damage/detriment that is incurred on players is reasonably fair. With Vial Smasher the Fierce, damage is assigned at random, and it isn't all that big of a deal unless it was from a 7-drop. With Fevered Visions,
Oath of Mages
and
Rivalry
, damage is dealt to those who have the most resources (hence the reason why I am not including Spiteful Visions in the deck). Sure,
Deadly Designs
can kill two creatures, but the only time that it would actually be worth using is if there is a big threat on the board and other players agree to help you (otherwise it is a 12-mana Curtains' Call). Sure
Fatal Lore
, Browbeat,
Pain's Reward
, Plague of Vermin,
Emberwilde Djinn
and Vexing Devil can all hurt players pretty badly, but it will only do so if they so choose. In general, people don't mind taking damage or paying resources if they have a choice in the matter (and it isn't intrusive like Rhystic Study).

Anyways, in general, while it seems much more like a group slug deck initially, this deck is meant to be more of a compromise between getting the whole table to have fun and doing well in the game. I am trying to show that the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, and that you don't need to lower yourself to making everyone else have a bad time in order to do well in a game.

April 19, 2017
7:04 p.m.

chirz2792 Lol the deck was based off of a terrible facebook meme in which somebody posted "I could be your angle... or yuor devil" so the spelling is intentional, and I have actually seriously considered including some of the curses, but I've noticed in the past that they end up drawing unneeded attention to me.

I kind of want to keep the deck so that I am giving people things at a slight cost to themselves similar to something like the effect of a Dark Confidant, while still having a reasonable presence in the game. From my experience other politics decks usually have to sacrifice their own resources/card slots to play the politics game, so I made this deck to try to see how I could get an optimal amount of politics while still being able to take part in the game myself. For that reason I'm trying to shy away from the curses because in my experience they tend to be a bit politically taboo (since you are singling out one person), and they don't really give me enough of a benefit for it to be worth it for me.

Thanks for the advice and the upvote! I appreciate the suggestions, as usual I tend to have a lot to say about something if I can't come to a conclusion on my own, so thanks for the great suggestions. If you have any past experiences with the curses feel free to let me know to help me make a concrete decision!

April 20, 2017
12:23 p.m.

April 20, 2017
2:47 p.m.

@poorpinkus: Apparently I'm not very good at the internet lol. I haven't had much experiences with the curses but the experience I have had is that they're good at bringing a player back down when they start to get out of hand. On another note if you want more Dark Confidant type effects then Duskmantle Seer would like to talk.

April 20, 2017
4:10 p.m.

June 19, 2017
12:54 p.m.

SpuddingChoice of Damnations is a great card but for 6 mana I just didn't find it worth it... Cruel Entertainment and Plague of Vermin are both similar but they end up being a bit more funny to me, plus they allow me to help myself while hurting somebody else. I actually have really thought of putting Do or Die, and I think I just forgot to include it somewhere in the deckbuilding process. I'll have to try to find a spot for it, thanks!

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